LASHON HARA - PART 4

Last week we mentioned that as well as the prohibition to speak lashon
hara (negative speech) it is also forbidden to actively listen to it.
There are two main reasons for this:

Firstly, by listening to the speaker you are enabling him to continue his
gossip and consequently causing him to sin. By doing so, one transgresses
a separate commandment in the Torah known as, ‘do not put a stumbling
block in front of a blind person’. One application of this is that we
cannot cause someone else to sin. The reason for this commandment is that
Judaism does not see each person as a separate individual who only needs
to be concerned about his own spiritual well-being. We are enjoined to
care about the spiritual well-being of our fellow man and therefore we
cannot cause him to perform an action that is spiritually damaging to
him.

One may think that listening to lashon hara would only involve a
transgression of not putting a stumbling block if you are the only
listener but if there are others there then the speaker would be able to
say his criticisms anyway. However, it is still possible that the
presence of another person may strengthen the speaker’s conviction to
speak and therefore listening could still involve putting a ‘stumbling
block’.

The second problem with listening to lashon hara is that it is very likely
that the listener will believe what is being said and will allow it to
cloud his opinion of the person under discussion. Accordingly, it is
highly advisable to try to not put oneself in the position of hearing
negative words. However, there are situations where it is unavoidable to
hear lashon hara - what should we do when this happens? The great
scholar, Rabbi Yisroel Kagan, known as the Chofetz Chaim, says that we
must strive not to believe the negative words that have been spoken.

This is no easy task, but one way of making it easier is to realize that
although the speaker may not be intentionally lying in what he is saying,
but nevertheless he is only saying things from his subjective point of
view. We all know that there are two sides to every story - when we hear
both people’s versions we understand how two people can see one event in
drastically different ways. Thus, for example, when John describes in
detail how Dave committed a deplorable act we cannot really know if the
way he saw the story is an accurate account of what actually happened.
Having this awareness can help us develop an ability to remain unaffected
by the negative speech that we hear.